The Best Laid Plans are Bound to Grow your Rye

Photo Credit inhabitat.com

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the amazing ability of natural selection to produce surprising results. From clownfish making a home in the tentacles of venomous anemones to the poop-eating fly, every niche gets filled and every resource gets used. But what happens when us notoriously destructive humans come into the picture? It turns out we’re not only destroying habitats by building houses, we’re also creating new ones in some pretty surprising places. Who knew your dishwasher could be so cozy?

            Before we venture into what’s colonizing our kitchens, let’s explore the idea of ecological niches and how they drive evolution. In simple terms, and ecological niche is any living thing’s role in its community. The waitress in your community serves you lunch, but also occupies a home, takes the bus to work, and buys bread from the bakery. Her niche in the community is not only what she does, but how she contributes to what everyone else does and where and when she moves around. Everyone has a niche: doctors, homeless people, cashiers, teachers, raccoons, moths, viruses, and fungi.

            Everything in nature occupies a specific ecological niche. If too many organisms have the same role (fill the same niche) in a community, the competition for resources makes it hard for them to make ends meet. Picture a neighbourhood with too many piano teachers: there are just not enough students (and paying parents) to go around. If one of them starts teaching children’s art classes, however, they can collect cash from a whole new set of parents. By using the community resources (ie. bored school kids) in a new way, the various teachers are able to coexist. This is essentially what happens in nature and is one of the major forces driving evolution.

            The pressure to use all available resources results in species that live in some pretty extreme environments. Think of the tubeworms in the boiling ecosystem around hydrothermal vents, fish in acidic caves, and black yeast growing in your dishwasher. That’s right, ecological niches can be man-made too, and some can be just as extreme as those found in nature. The dishwasher, for example provides an environment with intermittent hot temperatures, tons of moisture, and high pH (due to the dish soap). What it also provides is lots of food; after all, that’s what we’re trying to clean off the dishes in the first place. This valuable resource is not accessible to many organisms, but the few that can tolerate the harsh conditions can set up shop and thrive in this newly created household niche.

            Lots of spaces in our towns, cities, and especially bathrooms are great new habitats for the homemaking. Unfortunately for us, some of our microscopic roomies can prove pretty temperamental. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals are the result of an environment with lots of these chemicals. Heat-tolerant and potentially harmful black yeast are evolving to fit a very family-adjacent niche thanks to our hatred of hand-washing dishes.

            You can’t control everything, humans. The very areas we create as unlivable will always be taken advantage of by something that thrives in just those conditions. Every once in a while we have to take pause and remember: evolution is one bad grabba-jabba!

The Real "Scrubbing Bubbles" are Green and Slimy

If you asked most people about their favourite use for algae they might have some trouble coming up with a reply. Although my own preference is to have it wrapped around a tasty California roll, those who don’t share my obsession for this oriental treat might be interested in algae as a versatile ecological engineering tool. In true “But wait, there’s more!” fashion, algal turf scrubber technology is making progress in water quality improvement, reduction of commercial fertilizers, and biofuel production.

            Before delving into its potential for mopping up our planetary mess, what exactly is algae? “Simply” put, algae are “simple” plants. Plants because they are able to make their own food (autotrophic) through photosynthesis, and simple because their tissues are not differentiated in the same way that land plants are. Flowers and trees have tubular structures (vasculature) for nutrient transport and structural support. This includes root systems, leaf veins, and tube structures in trunks or stems. Aquatic algae don’t have this vascular system as their soggy environment creates natural buoyancy and helps move nutrients within the plant. Algae come in many varieties, all the way from single cells to massive kelp forests. The kinds used for algal turf scrubbers are of the “filamentous” variety and are made of long strings of individual cells strung together and resembling clumps of long, slightly slimy hair.

            So how does algal turf scrubber technology work? Essentially, screens of metal mesh are arranged at a slight angle in a waterway such that a shallow layer of water runs over them. Dense colonies of algae grow on these screens, making them look like very soggy grass “turf.” The turfs are “self-seeding” meaning that the natural algal species that grow best in each environment implant themselves on the screen and us bumbling humans just have to watch. As the water runs over the algae mats, the plants do what plants do best: grow. Conveniently enough, the fuel the algae needs to grow is exactly what we want taken out of the water: inorganic nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon dioxide. The water then flows off the other side of the algae-coated mesh “scrubbed” of these minerals and injected with dissolved oxygen. This process is especially effective in improving waters contaminated by sewage (treatment plants or farm run-off) and commercial fertilizers. In fact, these systems effectively work to fertilize growing algae with the wastes from our homes and farms.

            And now for the promised, “But Wait, There’s More!” All of this scrubbing and growing ends up producing a lot of algae. In fact, the turfs need to be harvested (by regular old garden variety shop-vac) about once a week to ensure the highest levels of growth. The beautiful thing about this technology is that you can use the produced biomass for more green technology. All of that rich, fertilized turf turns out to make great fertilizer itself, without the environmental baggage of commercial fertilizers. The slimy green harvest can also be fermented to methanol, ethanol, butanol, and methane, all of which can be used as alternatives to fossil fuels at a fraction of the cost of producing the same products from corn or soy.

            One man’s waste-water is another algae’s smorgasbord. By using algae to help clean the waters in everything from streams and rivers to areas of ocean, we can come closer to having our beef and feeding it too.

Why the Minotaur Needed Slime Mold

Photo Credit janthornhill.com

There’s just something about mazes. From PacMan to the hedge-labyrinths of yester-year, a good maze tantalizes the human mind. In fact, the combined esthetics and mental acrobatics of maze negotiation are so inspiring that for decades scientists have been harnessing the power of this puzzle. Yes, our trusty lab coat-clad comrades have tested the “intelligence” of many species using this age-old challenge, ultimately finding that we’re not the only ones capable of corn-maze escape. This prestigious group includes such proto-Einsteins as mice, guinea pigs, octopi, and… slime mold?

            What exactly is a slime mold? This is a harder question than you might think, as classifying these organisms is anything but straightforward. Broadly, they are eukaryotic organisms; like you and I they have a membrane-covered nucleus inside each cell that contains their DNA. Unlike you and I, they are not one organism made of many cells that are each part of a specific tissue (eg. bone, heart, or lung). Instead, they are either single cells or groups of cells that look more or less all the same. To complicate things further, they look vastly different at different points in their life cycle, even switching from life as individual cells to blob-esque communities. The labyrinth-saavy slime molds are in the latter state referred to as plasmodium.

            Although it sounds like something made up by a nineteenth century “psychic,” plasmodium is really an incredibly interesting, gutturally disturbing, and biologically useful body type. While the typical human cell has one set of chromosomes surrounded by one nucleus that is itself enclosed by one cell body, the plasmodium smashes this neat order into something straight out of science fiction. In this form, many cells exist as a community but share a single cell membrane. This means there is free exchange of nutrients and other materials through the goo inside the cell(s) without the inconvenience of actually having to ingest shared materials. This is somewhat akin to everyone in your neighbourhood getting together for a big group hug and then having all your skins fuse together. Although slightly terrifying, this situation has the advantage that only the ones closest to the BBQ have to eat for the whole group to be fed. But wait, there’s more! Due to the pseudo-multicellular nature of plasmodium, you can cut it up into tiny pieces, each of which will terrifyingly regenerate into new, whole healthy beings. Conversely, when two plasmodial slime molds meet they fuse together to form a single, larger plasmodium. The movie possibilities are truly endless.

            So what on earth does this have to do with mazes? The biological advantage of the plasmodium body is that a community can explore different directions while feeding back any nutrients to the rest of the group through tubes made of the cell body itself. The result of this behavior is a tubular complex that navigates the environment by building up the network in the directions of food, and breaking it down in “dead end” directions. Scientists have found that this actively re-optimizing network has properties similar to those used in modern computing, and yes, can be used to navigate mazes. One group is even comparing the patterns of slime mold plasmodium growth with those of roads on the Iberian Peninsula.

            While the research fields of Urban Planning and Microbiology are currently separated by several university blocks, who knows? Maybe some day we’ll be driving highly efficient highway routes first sketched out on Petri dishes rather than engineering pads.

The Hors D’Oeuvres at Westminster A-Bee

            As many a six-year-old aspiring princess will tell you, there are many roads to royalty. One can, for example, marry a prince (aka the Kate Middleton route), overthrow an existing monarch by force and declare oneself royal ruler (slightly bloodier), or be sure to finish one’s evening jelly? If you happen to be a honeybee, the latter is definitely the way to go. It turns out that hive royals are not selected through democratic election, military coups, or even heredity succession. Instead, the lucky larva that ends up as hive queen is singled out by her brand of baby food.

            We all learned in high school biology that our height, eye colour, ear-lobe type, and potato chip preference are determined by our DNA. That is to say that the random tango of our parent’s chromosomes pre-determines the basic physiology of the being that starts to develop when sperm meets egg. So queen bees (which develop faster, live longer, and are much bigger than their worker bee counterparts) must have the blue-blooded genes to match, right? Wrong! In true rags to riches form, queen bees are as plain-jane as they come when they hatch. It’s their princely diet that allows them to ascend beyond their worker bee sisters.

            The genetics of a honeybee hive are both complex and highly scandalous to their WASP neighbours. In short, the queen and all of the worker bees are female, and each have 32 chromosomes. Males (or drones) have half as many chromosomes and basically live to mate, producing thousands of genetically identical sperm cells. The queen mates with several drones to produce a slew of daughter worker bees. These have in common with each other the same proportion of maternal DNA as humans do with our siblings. The difference between us and our fine furry flying friends is that all of the sperm from a single drone is identical, meaning that offspring from the same father are genetically closer than human sisters. The research community has not offered any insight into whether this means they had better slumber parties.

So what do the genes of a queen bee look like? Just like those of all her worker bee sisters. Although the female bees in a hive are not genetically identical, they are all sisters (or half sisters) and have similar diversity to that in a blended modern family. What gives the queen her very distinctive physical features and lifestyle is therefore not her DNA, but rather the way in which her body develops. In other words: in the honeybee world the “nature vs. nurture” debate is truly a no-contest.

            In the larval stage, baby bees are tended to by their worker bee sisters. When the hive needs a new queen so the old queen can die or move out colonial-style to build a new hive and expand the empire, the workers feed select larvae “royal jelly.” This exclusive confection is produced by glands on their heads and contains a compound called royalactin. In dramatic magic potion fashion, this compound induces a plethora of physiological responses ultimately resulting in a new melliferal monarch.

            Although Lady Gaga might disagree, if you ask a queen bee what makes her so fabulous she will most certainly not reply, “I was born this way!”

Real Guinea Pigs don't Giggle

Reading the titles of the scientific articles published in any given week ultimately leaves me with one take-home message: scientists will study anything. Case in point: right now the Humour Research Lab (HuRL) in Boulder Colorado is investigating whether things are funnier under the influence of marijuana. Funny, eh?

            But seriously folks, humour is a gravely important topic highly deserving of a dedicated and meticulous team of scrupulously unfunny real scientist researchers. Really. Okay, the lucky grad students performing this work are allowed to be a little funny, but the results of their work (however amusing to the general public) are crucial pieces of the human psychology puzzle. As these researchers will point out (to any bench scientist pointing and laughing at them) the ubiquity and pervasiveness of humour in human culture indicates a key role in psychological well-being. Anxiousness, fear, and especially happiness have been hot topics in the modern world of psychological research. Studies about the nature of humour add to this body of work by contributing valuable insight into how humans interpret and process incoming information.

            So exactly how are these studies conducted? Do these researchers just wander around with clip boards occasionally noting down “funny” or “not funny,” or are test subjects shoved into an MRI and forced to watch Fresh Prince reruns until their patronizing amusement centres light up? Perhaps surprisingly, the truth is closer to the first scenario with a few laughable modifications. Students from a university campus were recruited to participate in studies with the promise of either course credit or candy bars (that’s right, undergraduates can be bought with candy). To earn their sugary snack, students were asked to read descriptions of various scenarios and respond to questions regarding how they felt about them. I can only imagine that reporting these results in a respectable fashion takes more than a dash of academic discipline as the questionnaires tend to include such sitcom gold as a man rubbing his bare genitalia on a willing kitten, someone making the decision to snort the ashes of their deceased father, and a man having sex with a dead chicken before cooking it for dinner. The final academic publication walks a fine line between rigorous science and reading material for future humour test subjects.

            When all of the giggling dies down, what are we learning about all of this funny business? The hypothesis championed by the folks in Boulder is termed “benign violation.” By this theory, things are funny when they challenge or disrupt a cultural norm (that’s the “violation” part), and are seen as harmless or “benign.” This theory explains why a child hitting his father in the crotch with a baseball bat is endlessly hilarious (just ask Bob Sagget), but only until the injury requires surgery stopping the man from having more children (suddenly a little more serious). According to this group, we find disturbing, disgusting, and generally wrong things absolutely uproarious, unless they present a real threat to our well-being or that of those we identify with.

            So the next time that you’re chuckling over some stooge-worthy antics, remember that your mom was right: “it’s all fun and games until…”

Read more in HuRL's benign violation paper

Eat Your Heart Out Noah: Ants on the High Seas

What do you get when you mix a colony of fire ants, a pool of water and biological engineers? Science! More specifically, you get ant behavior that starts to blur the lines between animal psychology and grade 12 physics.

            We’ve all seen footage of a colony of ants cooperating to move food or construction materials: each ant lending a mandible as one small cog in the colony machine. This metaphor starts to become a little less metaphorical, however, when the construction materials in question are the ants themselves. When they’re not breaking up picnics, it turns out that ants can also build self-assembling rafts with astonishing characteristics.

In a paper published in the May 10^th, 2011 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of engineers and biologists explore the physical dynamics of these bug barges. They collected road-side fire ant colonies, made ant-balls by stirring several thousand ants around in a beaker, and finally poured the insect orbs into tanks of water to observe the effects.What these researchers saw was not panicked dog-paddling and tiny wails of “every ant for themselves!” but rather the colony weaving together to form a waterproof mesh that can float for days, or even weeks. Looking at the microscopic structure of the rafts revealed that the ants both “hold hands” and (gently) grasp other’s limbs in their mandibles to hold the structure together. The ant-raft also responds to such stimuli as being poked with a stick by grasping each other more tightly to form a finer and more waterproof netting.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: insects floating are not exactly news. Insect exoskeletons are slightly hydrophobic (repel water) and we’ve all seen insects poised delicately on a pond’s surface on a calm day. While it might be underwhelming that the ant rafts are both waterproof and buoyant, the shape and physical dynamics of the raft structure definitely fall into the amazing category. In fact, when forming such floating vessels, individual ants behave less like independent creatures and more like particles in a liquid. The rafts in these experiments were constructed from thousands of ants in a rough ball shape. When placed on the surface of the water, the ants spread out in a matter of minutes to form a pancake-shaped floating raft (picture a ball of silly putty left on a counter in a warm kitchen for a couple of days). In fact, the physical properties of the ant masses were found to be more similar to a physical substance than a conglomeration of multiple sentient beings.

The self-assembling, self-healing, and impressive physical characteristics of the ant rafts in this study have attractive implications for the application of nanorobotics in similar tasks. Once again, Nature’s astounding engineering projects leave our biomimetic scientific efforts scrambling to keep up.

Learn more in this incredible ant raft research paper.
Also check out the amazing video footage

Feed a Fever, Fatten a Heart Attack?

“A diet low in saturated fats,” is a phrase we most often associate with a healthy, heart-happy lifestyle. If your dad came home from the hospital after a heart attack, a cheeseburger likely wouldn’t be the first object you’d thrust into his hand. And while I’m not suggesting you put a poutine vending machine in your local cardiac ward, new research suggests that saturated fats might actually be beneficial for heart patients.

            A new study headed by Margaret Chandler of Case Western Reserve University investigated the effect of a high-fat diet on rats with heart failure. Surprisingly (at least to this health-conscious citizen), the post-heart attack rats fed on a high fat diet had improved heart function over their ho-hum diet counterparts. This was true for resting rats and (rat race anyone?) rats under stress.

            So how on earth does a high fat diet HELP heart function? The same group of researchers tried to answer this question by investigating what genes are being expressed in the healthy, heart-unhappy, and fat-fed rats. This is like looking at which tools from an industrial-sized toolbox are out on the bench, and which are stored away. Using this metaphor, heart cells in a person who has heart damage might put away their hammer and take out their sledge hammer. However, this new study shows that a high fat diet actually helps to make damaged heart use more of the same tools as a healthy heart, thus bringing it closer to a pre-heart attack state.

            Now to burst your bubble, before you go stock up on fast-food coupons: diets high in saturated fat do nothing (read NOTHING) to help a normal healthy heart. And as a crucial caution for all new research with a medical slant: Don’t Try This at Home!

            This type of study might someday lead to better treatment to help keep heart patients healthy. In the mean time it’s a pretty cool study that makes this scientist go, “Huh, who knew?”